Sports has devolved to a ridiculous state in this COVID-19 era, but the virus is merely the catalyst that accelerated a process toward the absurd that already was well in motion.

As I write this, the Armed Forces Bowl is being played, with Tulsa, a 6-2 team ranked 24^th nationally, meeting 3-7 Mississippi State.

Mississippi State took an early lead, and should the Bulldogs win, some will trumpet that as proof the team deserved to play in a bowl. They are wrong; just as wrong as any fools who would insist that the putrid New York Jets should make the NFL playoffs based on winning their past two games, upsetting the LA Rams and Cleveland Browns.

I recall a time when college bowl games were reserved for successful teams – make that very successful teams. As the number of bowl games has increased through the years, the standards have been lowered. Here is an example of the virus merely magnifying a trend already in progress.

Can an 0-11 bowl team be in our future? Don’t bet against it.

Think of this watered-down bowl situation as college football’s equivalent of a participation trophy.

There is a downside to this feel-good exercise. Where once making a bowl game was an accomplishment for the players and the teams, now it is no more than an extra away game, often in places that aren’t exactly tourist meccas.

On the other end of the spectrum, the college football championship semifinals are to be played on New Year’s Day. But even though the records of the teams are impressive, there have been accommodations made here, too.

Look at Ohio State and its 6-0 record. First, a special dispensation had to be made to get Ohio State into its Big Ten title game due to a lack of games played by the Buckeyes, a bow to COVID-19.

Having gotten into that conference championship game, and rallying to beat Northwestern, the Buckeyes were unbeaten but largely untested.

Other teams, most notably one-loss Texas A&M (8-1), argued publicly for inclusion in the four-team playoff field. This was not necessarily at the expense of Ohio State, but at least a call for a closer look at a one-loss Notre Dame team whose marquee win was over Clemson, in overtime, against a Clemson team playing without its starting quarterback.

In the rematch, Clemson had Trevor Lawrence back to play quarterback and rolled Notre Dame off the field to the tune of a 34-10 final.

Yet Notre Dame is in the hunt for the national title and Texas A&M is not.

The four-team college football playoff field continues to be a joke that runs contrary to the inclusion philosophy that permeates so much of society and sports. Make it eight teams and there almost never could be teams with legitimate cases left on the outside.

Back to bowl games, there was a Cotton Bowl played Dec. 30 in which Florida was fielding a team mostly of backups as numerous top-tier players either were sidelined by the virus, or merely decided not to play, the “opt-out” option, in order to save themselves from possible injury and harm to their professional prospects.

Predictably, Oklahoma destroyed Florida by a 55-20 score. This could not have been very satisfying, for winner or loser. I pity the fools who actually watched this garbage on television.

The NFL is not immune to the absurdity. Virus-depleted rosters produce joke games that have serious impact on postseason plans.

Pro football already is a model of socialism, where strong teams from one season are “rewarded” with tougher schedules the next season. Already the allocation of talent is on a reverse-merit system, with the losers given drafting priority over the successful.

Making things even more difficult to stomach is the social justice warrior ethic that has invaded all levels of sports – although the NBA has backed off its blatant Black Lives Matter labeling since TV ratings tanked last season, likely as blowback from the populace.

Curious times produce curious results. I have yet to watch more than a few plays of any NFL game this season.

If we resume our annual Super Bowl parties, I might find myself hanging with those who ignore the game, but eagerly consume the commercials.

We have become a nation of euphemism dispensers, as reality increasingly is sugarcoated to make it go down more easily.

Garbage men are sanitation engineers. Handicapped people are differently enabled. Participation trophies have replaced awards for the winners.

Even in supposed meritocracies such as professional sports, there are euphemisms bandied about.

I spent a lot of time covering pro football, specifically the Pittsburgh Steelers, and every summer many a player was cut from the roster and sent packing from preseason training camp with the soothing words of “it was just the numbers game” ringing in their ears.

This was supposed to ease the blow to their pride, with the implication being that they had talent, but if only the players had been at a different position, where the number of proven players was not as great, they might have made the roster.

Reality, implied but left unsaid, was that if they’d have been good enough, they’d have displaced those proven players and there would have been different victims of the numbers game.

I’m not sure, but now maybe these roster cuts get participation trophies as parting gifts

As an aside, the member of the staff charged with notifying players who were about to be cut, to come see the coach and bring their playbook, generally was, and is, labeled “The Turk.”

This is a title which surprisingly has endured in this era of racism sensitivity, be the racism real, perceived or imagined.

In a bit of irony, Steelers offensive tackle Tunch Ilkin, an actual Turk who was born in Istanbul in 1957, never got a visit from the metaphorical Turk, playing for the Steelers and Green Bay Packers before retiring of his own volition in 1993.

The numbers game – non-football variety – is prevalent as 2020 dodders toward 2021.

Begin with insipid utterances of so many that 2021 has to be better than 2020, and not just because it is one digit higher.

These optimists without portfolio forget that the calendar is an artificial construction, not recognized by forces of distress.

A Harris-Biden administration could make 2020 look like the good, old days, should they be able to accomplish remaking our country into a dystopian nightmare.

While working 20 years at the Johnstown newspaper, such misplaced optimism broke out any time the chain ownership, which had come on board relatively late in my run there, played musical chairs with the editors.

The new people surely would be better than what we had, the underlings mused. They never were.

This sort of misplaced optimism was summed up neatly by an executive for Bethlehem Steel, then the major employer in Johnstown, who succinctly told the populace to expect the worst and it never would be disappointed.

Not that many years later, Bethlehem Steel was bankrupt and gone from Johnstown.

We got a curious numbers game release today when Gallup announced President Trump had topped its annual Most Admired Man poll garnering 18 percent. Joe Biden, the man who ostensibly had beaten Trump in the recent election, came in at a lusty 6 percent.

Biden even trailed significantly runner-up Barack Obama (15 percent) and had a modest edge over Dr. Tony Fauci (3 percent) who is the relatively unpopular face of lockdown America.

Experts in statistics and probability have studied the November election and concluded that it is improbable – more like virtually impossible — that Biden won the election in view of the way the voting totals could be broken down against previous benchmarks.

But Biden appears to have beaten the Turk and won the numbers game.

Another numbers game is the ongoing stimulus debate.

There had been numerous studies, even before COVID-19 and the economic shutdowns, that the average American household was running on fumes financially

One study that was reported in Forbes magazine on Jan. 6, 2016, said 63 percent of those households didn’t have $500 in savings to meet an unexpected expense.

Presumably many of those are the same people who in late 2020 are decrying that a $600 stimulus check per person isn’t nearly enough for them.

Even given inflationary adjustments, $600 now is more than $500 in 2016. And that is not $600 per household, but rather $600 per household member, making a total of $2,400 for the typical four-person grouping.

For these people, even the proposed $2,000 a head/$8,000 per family, would not be enough. But that is more a reflection of their poor spending habits than anything else.

Do not forget, the government early in 2020 had handed out $1,200 stimulus checks per adult and $600 per child.

Remember, too, that those who have lost their jobs have for some time enjoyed extended and enhanced unemployment benefits on top of any stimulus payments doled out by the federal government.

For some people, this meant that they made more when not working. Stories appeared in the media of workers being upset over callbacks to their jobs.

These increased unemployment benefits are likely to be continued in one form or another in coming days or weeks, just as additional stimulus payments are coming, of one size or another.

The resulting parabolic increase in the United States national debt is the ignored, but still relevant, consequence of the handouts

It is our national numbers game. The Turk eventually will come calling.

Listen closely and you can almost hear some of the variations of Christmas standards being sung in the homes of our elite overlords and those who oppose them.

Jingle Bells (as sung in Dr. Tony Fauci’s house)

Wear your mask, wear your mask, everywhere you go.

In your home or at the store, it’s the way to go, hey.

Take your shot, take your shot, we demand that, too.

If you don’t we’ll shame you good and keep you in our zoo.

Yes we don’t obey, the orders that we give.

But you still must heed our thoughts, or we won’t let you live.

We know much more than you, a thought we gladly share.

So do as told, just shut your mouth and we’ll pretend to care, hey.

White Christmas (as sung in Joe and Dr. Jill Biden’s bunker)

I’m dreaming of a clear moment,

Just like the one’s I used to have.

When my kids all listened; my ideas glistened

Plus, we raked in lots of dough.

Deck The Halls (as sung in the homes of Democrat Party vote manipulators)

Juice the count with mail-in ballots.

Count ’em all, count ’em all, every one.

We will win if we just do this.

And the courts won’t spoil our fun.

Oh Christmas Tree (as sung in front of Nancy Pelosi’s $25,000 refrigerator)

More stimulus, more stimulus, we must appease the masses.

If we don’t, they will be mad and come and kick our (butts).

We took their jobs and now they’re poor.

So just to help, we’ll give them more.

More stimulus, more stimulus, we’ll give them back their money.

Good King Wenceslas (as sung in the White House)

Donald Trump he did his best, trying to save the country.

But the deep state cracked him up, just like Humpty Dumpty.

Now The Donald may not go, citing ballot cheating.

If he stays his job will last; his impact not be fleeting.

Christmas Gifts For The Greats, Near-Greats And Ingrates

Sam-ta Claus has a tradition of cobbling up a list of gift suggestions for the rich and famous who are too busy — these days trying to ruin the world – to do holiday shopping for themselves.

Merry Christmas to them and here’s what they should find under their trees.

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden: Matching 55-gallon drums of Botox so they don’t need to share. Yes, both will continue to look like walking cadavers in 2021, but at least their skin will have that artificial stretched look, sort of like the working surface of a snare drum.

William Barr and John Durham: A copy of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First? script. These bumblers make the Abbott and Costello duo doing their famous routine look like a pair of geniuses by comparison.

President Trump: He can self-gift all-inclusive pardons to himself and his family members because if the Deep State was able to gin up false charges and harass him when he operated from the Oval Office, imagine what they will do when he is out of power.

Eric Swalwell: A blowup Asian sex doll so he won’t need to keep company with and/or employ Chinese spies.

Kamala Harris: Two gifts for our would-be Number Two in the executive branch. First, she gets her very own Joe Biden voodoo doll, the better to speed up her ascent to the top, as her handlers have planned. Also, Harris needs a DVD of the movie “The Manchurian Candidate” as background

Governor Tom Wolf: A scale model of Pennsylvania so he can take out all his lockdown anger on the toy state and leave the real thing alone and hopefully avoid the economic collapse he seems determined to guarantee.

Dr. Tony Fauci: Someone to take notes for him and remind him when he’s pulling a 180-degree turn in his public comments.

John Bolton: An industrial-sized mustache comb and a world-domination video game so he can stop trying to instigate more world-wide conflict.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC): A primer on the difference between working behind a bar, as she did before landing in the U.S. House of Representatives, and being admitted to the legal bar, which so many of her Congressional colleagues have been.

Hunter Biden: Gainful employment that he at last can get and keep on his own, not due to daddy’s influence. Keep practicing these few words, Hunter: “Do you want fries with that?”

John Roberts: Our Supreme Court Chief Justice needs a two-liter bottle of spit, the better always to be ready to wet his finger and determine the way the political winds are blowing before he makes a decision on his next major case, or just ignores it completely.

Bill Gates: A furry white cat to sit on his lap and be stroked as Mr. Microsoft plans his world domination in the best James Bond villain tradition.

Elon Musk: The lead role in the next movie about the life and times of P.T. Barnum, he of the oft-cited quote “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Musk presides over Tesla, ostensibly a car company worth more than any other, including Toyota, despite earning its profit based on selling carbon credits, not automobiles.

Dr. Jill Biden: A compilation of quotes from the Dr. Leonard McCoy character in the old “Star Trek” series, who was known for saying often, with feeling, “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank). Now, old Doc McCoy was supposed to be an actual physician, an MD, not a Dr. of education, as Dr. Biden is. But Jill seems a bit touchy when her title is not used, so if anyone forgets she’s a doctor, she can crack open the McCoy quote book and let them have it.

Mark Zuckerberg: A like, a follow and a friend request from Bill Gates’ white cat.

There was a time in journalism, way back when accuracy took precedence over agendas, that veterans would school the cub reporters with this bromide: If a woman calls and says she’s your mother, check it out.

Don’t presume. Don’t assume. Don’t trust single sources.

How trite this all seems as 2020 comes to a close and much of the news media has eagerly transformed into propaganda organs. If a single, anonymous source, supports the agenda, run with it. If a competently sourced story doesn’t suit the agenda, refuse to report it or, if that can’t be done, suppress it.

I had a head start on learning this type of now passe practice of digging for answers because the old man tended to answer requests for information with the general reply “Look it up yourself.”

Maybe he didn’t know the answer. Maybe he did. Either way, he thought it was better for me to learn to gather information myself. He was right.

All these years later, even after I’ve stopped doing this sort of thing for pay, the habit persists,

This is the roundabout way of getting into today’s inquiry: Why do so many charities set their requests at $19 a month?

Just the other night a cute kid on a television ad told me that donating $19 a month would show I cared.

So, $18 a month doesn’t cut it? How about $18.99 a month?

I wanted to know why $19 was magic, so I did some research.

Back in the day, I’d have needed to run to the family encyclopedias, or even to the library, to get my answer. These days it’s as easy as logging on to the internet, calling up a search engine and asking why so many charities request $19 a month?

Duckduckgo,com, my new favorite go-to for untracked search, didn’t pull an old man and tell me to look it up myself. Instead, it gave me many answers.

It’s not so much that $19 a month shows I care, but rather that most of us don’t care so much about parting with $19 a month. We would, however, think twice or more at $20 a month, no matter how worthy the cause.

People who set prices long ago learned the power of the nine. Gasoline prices end in 9/10ths. Car prices tend to be $29,999.99. Not $30,000, just $29,000 plus 999.99.

For similar reasons, many charities, and businesses, like to break down the cost per day. For example, that $19 a month can be stated in the minuscule amount of just 63 cents a day. Suddenly it all sounds so much less expensive than even $19 a month, or $228 a annually, which is $19 a month times 12, as in the number of months in year.

One source added that for book-keeping purposes and tax returns, the Feds require the charity provide written acknowledgment of gifts of more than $250 a year. The $19-a-month figures keep the total under the need for such paperwork.

This is not to say these charities, whether they are for ailing kids, wounded soldiers or suffering animals, don’t deserve the $19 a month or much more.

It just speaks to the way subtle psychological manipulation has infiltrated all corners of our society, whether it is used for purposes noble or nefarious.

As time passes, individuals are going to have a greater need to take it upon themselves to think critically about the messages they have conveyed to them by media, big tech and the government.

Sometimes you are being played like a fiddle. Don’t hand them the bow.

More and more it is becoming evident that we’re neck-deep in a battle of us vs. them.

It’s not really political right vs. political left, conservatives vs. liberals, capitalists vs. socialists, mask Nazis vs. mask haters, or even race vs. race.

Those are merely the skirmishes that stem from the root battle, which is elites vs. the rest of us.

It helps the cause of the elites who would control every aspect of your life that they can pit group vs. group.

Divide and conquer, it’s the oldest playbook for those who would rule the world. The elites love to see the infighting that advances their cause and allows them still to be able to profess their innocence

Sometimes the elites drop their collective guard and come right out with their disdain for the masses.

Witness Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment, or Barack Obama’s crack about his opponents being bitter people clinging to guns and religion. Obama’s remark is particularly illuminating because he was demeaning those who would exercise rights guaranteed them in the U.S. Constitution.

Our Constitution, and any similar guarantee of individual rights around the world, are the enemy of the elites. These rights prevent elites from completely subjugating those whom they deem inferior.

But the elites have been chipping away at the edges of our protections for some time and now, emboldened by COVID-19, they have put on a full-court press to render them null and void.

The evidence is all around you, if you care to look.

Consider the hypocrisy spouted daily by elites and crammed down our throats by media and big tech. That would be the same media and big tech that carefully suppress any messages running contrary to the mantra of blind obedience to power.

Just this week it was revealed – by a family whistleblower ironically – that Dr. Deborah Birx, a prominent member of the government’s Coronavirus Task Force, had preached limiting travel and Thanksgiving get-togethers only to travel and host a huge holiday gathering for her extended family.

Were this an isolated example, it would not be such a big deal. But it is a pattern of behavior by Birx and her ilk. The elites preach restraint and restriction, then flaunt that the rules don’t apply to them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needed a beauty shop opened to touch her up cosmetically, as did Chicago Lori Lightfoot, both actions having been taken while the “little people” were told to stay home and such establishments were closed for those of the lesser classes.

California Governor Gavin Newsom closed restaurants then attended a party at a restaurant. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo advised against holiday celebrations then planned one of his own, just as his little brother used his media soapbox to maintain his adherence to quarantining, which was called into question.

Also today, amidst generally good COVID-19 developments in terms of vaccines being issued and a financial stimulus package on the way, a report came from the United Kingdom of a new strain of virus that supposedly is 70 percent more contagious.

Predictably, there have been knee-jerk over-reactions such as travel bans, lockdowns and business closings.

But some are questioning this latest development. Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford University, is a skeptic,

“I’ve been doing this job for 25 years and I can tell you, you can’t establish a quantifiable number in such a short time frame.”

Translation: The elites needed bad news and some was conjured up on cue to keep virus concerns front-and-center. But that wasn’t enough. It had to be even worse that what we already have had on the plate,

And people like Heneghan will have their skeptical sentiments banned outright from dissemination, flagged as unproven, or ridiculed by the usual media suspects.

But the 70-percent-worse claim will be trumpeted far and wide.

Such over-reaches should be all the evidence rational people need to decide they are being manipulated and demeaned.

The elites would seem to have made similar mistakes by the degree to which they went overboard in trying to guarantee a populist politician such as President Trump did not get a second term in office.

The fact that elites can act in such obvious ways and not be called on it by the masses, instead of by just a select few contrary voices, indicates the war already has likely been lost.

Spoiler alert: The elites have won.

There is a story out today, supposedly leaked by a whistleblower, that the Supreme Court passed on hearing the Texas complaint involving tainted elections at the behest of Chief Justice John Roberts.

According to the recounting of the events, Roberts was screaming so loud at other justices that he could be heard outside the closed-door room.

Robert’s supposed warning: “Are you going to be responsible for the rioting if we hear this case?”

And so we have apparent confirmation of what has been written here for some time, that even the people in charge, who know this election was questionable, just don’t have the intestinal fortitude to right the wrongs, to enforce our Constitution.

They are cowed by the Antifa and Black Lives Matter crowd. They fear the cancel culture. They bow to the mob, which begs the question of why we need such people to be in positions of authority?

Texas and the raft of states who signed on to the Supreme Court argument, had a case based on constitutional dictates. The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to consider such differences between the states, with the Constitution as the guide.

But the Supreme Court passed on its duty, perhaps due to fear of the outcome in terms of societal strife.

Conservatives apparently are going to keep getting abused and cheated up to the time when they also take to the streets to get the attention of the powers-that-be.

But it would not be enough to match the violence of the left. The political right would need to top the actions of the left to get the attention of the people who matter.

This is an argument distilled nicely in dialogue from the 1997 movie “The Untouchables” as voiced by Sean Connery’s character; “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”

Antifa and all other manner of violent radical leftist groups discovered that they can get their demands met by making life difficult, particularly in cities led by weak-kneed liberals who only get concerned when rioting or autonomous zones come to their neighborhoods – witness actions of the mayors of Seattle and Portland.

If you watched any national news ahead of the election, you saw storefronts being boarded up in case the election went the wrong way – read that as in case Trump won and the leftists were not prepared to accept that.

Instead, we have Biden apparently winning. But there is no rioting from disaffected conservatives and Trump supporters. Yet.

Maybe there will not be any. But I would not bet on it.

There is anger among the 74 million or so who voted for Trump and are at a loss to understand how they see evidence upon evidence of election misdeeds, yet no government action is being taken to correct, or even fully investigate the situation.

State judicial representatives and state legislatures have done little. Governors of questioned states also have been doing their best to ignore, or make token efforts at resolution.

Now the Supreme Court has taken a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach even to considering what arguably is the case that could be pivotal to the future of this nation.

I have written often that doing the right thing requires the kind of strength our wimpy leaders do not display.

The internet remains alive with speculation about what actions a frustrated President Trump might take in order to bring the alleged election fraud into the open since others below him have passed on their duty, including the U.S. Department of Justice.

It would surprise me if such dramatic action by Trump transpired, but it would not disappoint me.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson recognized there would be points in the future of this nation when dramatic action would be needed to preserve freedom.

Said Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots, and tyrants.”

Things got a little exciting in the neighborhood the other morning when, shortly before 9 a.m., there was a loud bang outside, which caught the attention of my wife and two granddaughters.

I dismissed it as the prevalent modus operandi of delivery people, who insist on slamming shut sliding doors with so much force it’s like they are trying to send them to China.

Not willing to accept my theory, the wife ran to a window in the living room and discovered a pickup truck resting on my next-door neighbor’s front lawn, having taken out a large bush before coming to a stop.

I rushed out on this brisk December morning, sans coat and wearing only slippers, to find a neighbor from across the street already checking on the driver, who remained sitting behind the wheel with the motor still running, and the driver looking properly dazed.

I pried open the driver’s side door and, as the guy inside shut off the car at the suggestion of the other neighbor, I took stock of his situation.

He wasn’t hurt, he assured. He also didn’t seem to be particularly coherent.

My wife had called 911 and then came out to hand me the cell phone, thereby giving the operator the opportunity to quiz me on several topics, including whether anyone here was suffering from COVID-19. I am not making this up.

Police and medical personal were on the way, I was assured. Neighbor one asked me if I had this under control and went back to his home across the street. Another neighbor wandered over to take his place and we waited.

It eventually came out that the guy who created this mess had slammed into a parked car four houses up and in the process, the pickup truck had shed its driver’s side front wheel and suspension. That missing assembly was still on the pavement, four houses up the street.

The pickup truck next had veered left, scraping one small tree and narrowly avoiding a massive one – oak, I believe – digging up grass in multiple yards and knocking off the neighbor’s bush, which had a trunk about six inches in diameter.

He had gone a long way, maybe 150 feet, after losing the wheel before stopping. No tire skid marks from serious braking were to be found on the neighbor’s concrete driveway. Curious.

We left everything as it was, including the driver sitting in his seat right up until the time when four police cars, from multiple jurisdictions, showed up, along with an ambulance, a fire truck and another emergency response vehicle.

It strikes me that the defund-the-police types should consider things such as this, occurring in a relatively quiet residential borough, when they call for the end of policing as we know it.

If there are no police, who becomes the official source to sort out such a mess? Although I cannot confirm it, I was told by a guy who had been talking with the police that the driver registered well above the cutoff for driving drunk.

The same person who relayed the alcohol result told me that earlier he had helped the guy into his car at a nearby deli, thinking he was ill. When this person went inside to make his purchase, the help there told him the guy was drunk.

Our truck driver did have a submarine sandwich and drink (coffee?) in the cab of his vehicle.

I’m not sure how this witness from the deli made it to the accident scene, about one-half mile away from the store, but I’m speculating he had heard the sirens and curiosity took over. I know he told me he did tell all this to the police – about seeing the guy at the deli, etc.

Since we do have a police force, the neighbor whose car was smashed, and the neighbor whose bush got a fatal trimming, had someone to go to for official accident reports to begin the insurance process.

Because we have police, I’m presuming our driver is going to be held to account for his alleged impaired state, presuming what I was told was accurate and I’d made the correct assessment based on what I’d seen.

With no police, this sort of thing would turn into a free-for-all; vigilante justice at its best.

It’s not just murders, rapes, assaults, robberies and other assorted major crimes that require the police. It’s mundane things like auto accidents, trespassing, petty theft and so many other infractions that take place in society and require a neutral, credentialed third party to resolve.

Instead of defunding the police, let us defund the political activists who curry favor with far-left groups with such outrageous demands, and encounter too many weak-kneed politicians who either are unwilling or unable to resist their insanity.

I listen to Joe Biden repeatedly respond to inquiries about the woes of his son Hunter with stock variations on the theme that he’s proud of the guy, and I think of actor John Banner, AKA Sgt. Schultz.

Most recently, when it came to light that Hunter is being investigated for potential tax fraud and money laundering, Joe yelled to the few reporters who dared to ask about the inquiry, “I’m proud of my son.”

On the infrequent occasions when the coddling media members have brought up other Hunter issues, like having a job as a consultant to a foreign energy company despite lacking any real expertise in the area, Joe has claimed to have been proud of Hunter then, too.

Hunter’s ties with Chinese? Joe is proud.

Hunter has had problems with drugs and alcohol, marriage, and for a time was dating his dead brother’s widow.

The guy even claimed Immaculate Conception of one of his children, fathered, he contended, without the benefit of sexual intercourse with the mother.

DNA evidence put before the court, as Hunter attempted to dodge financial responsibility for the child, indicated “with near scientific certainty” that he was, indeed, the father of said child and Hunter finally folded his losing denial hand and started paying.

Joe, of course, would have been about to bust with pride over that, if anyone had bothered to ask.

As a father myself, I understand parental pride. But I’m thinking if my son had confessed to problems with drugs and alcohol, had fathered an illegitimate child and tried to weasel out of financial responsibility, and had somehow tried to trade on my name – as likely as the last might seem — I’d still love the guy.

But proclaim pride over all those shortcomings? Not so much. Maybe sympathy, or empathy or general understanding. Maybe a heart-to-heart chat that would have been attempted with the message being that it’s time to clean up the act.

It would not have been a matter of pride.

Now a few words about John Banner/Sgt. Schultz. I grew up watching the Hogan’s Heroes show, a half-hour sit-com that ran from 1965 to 1972 with the unlikely setting of a German prisoner of war camp. Banner’s Schultz character made famous the tag line “I know nothing. Nothing!” as he ignored prisoners’ schemes

Only this week, while watching reruns of The Untouchables that air on Sunday afternoons on one cable outlet, did I discover that Banner had used the know-nothing line before Hogan’s Heroes.

Specifically, in one episode of The Untouchables from 1962, Banner played a German brewmaster putting out illegal beer in prohibition-era Chicago. He was being used as an unwitting tool in a battle between two mobsters and when one of those mobsters confronted Banner over his role with the competition, Banner’s reply was “Nothing. I know nothing!”

This time Banner’s character truly was in the dark.

It’s hard to believe Joe Biden is totally in the dark about Hunter, but on occasion he’s been Sgt. Schultz-like in denying knowing what Hunter was up to. Joe Biden also claimed to be unaware, literally saying “I know nothing,” about moves by the FBI to investigate Trump national security adviser General Michael Flynn that were aired in a meeting attended by Biden as vice president.

Biden had to walk back the Flynn denial later in the same interview, claiming he’d misheard the question.

So far “I know nothing” regarding Hunter has been accepted.

Of the two, “I know nothing” is less irritating than “I’m proud.”

Imagine parents of historical figures borrowing from Joe’s “I’m proud” shtick.

So, Mrs. Hitler, Adolf seems to have done some very bad things. What’s that? You’re proud of your son?

OK. Never mind.

And I see you nodding Mr. Boesky, Mrs. Ponzi and Mr. Madoff.

You’re proud, too?

Well, I guess that makes everything OK.

Election fraud has been rendered a non-issue. Hunter Biden’s investigation for tax dodging continues.

But the big story is Jill Biden’s insistence on being referred to as Dr. Jill Biden.

It reminds me of a story a fellow Pittsburgh sports columnist told me of trying to call then-Pitt men’s basketball coach Roy Chipman for a few quotes.

Chipman’s stuffy secretary answered the call and when said writer asked to talk to Roy, she took the opportunity to remind him that it was “Dr.” Roy Chipman.

Chipman’s doctorate was not in physics, or mathematics, or history, or English, but rather physical education. At least it wasn’t in coaching basketball, a subject in which Chipman was more bachelor’s degree level.

It is not clear if it was a Chipman dictate that he be referred to as a Dr., or just the secretary taking it upon herself to be an elitist.

Generally, those who would insist on being referred to as Dr., at least beyond those who have a medical doctorate, or those who are operating outside their doctoral field, are decried as elitists.

But not so in the case of Dr. Jill. It was particularly helpful as the COVID-19 situation was being politicized, to note that Joe Biden’s wife was a Dr. But her doctorate is in education, not medicine.

No matter. The uninformed would never bother to make that determination and they certainly would not be told so by the fawning media, so Joe probably picked up some votes based on Jill being a Dr.

An Op-Ed piece appearing in the Wall Street Journal recently that suggested Dr. Jill drop the Dr. has been reacted to with customary outrage, blaming the writer for being a misogynist, and perhaps a Neanderthal and a racist, too.

Funny, but the left-leaning media had ridiculed Rand Paul, when he was running for president, for preferring to be referred to as Dr. Rand Paul. He is an ophthalmologist.

In an April 10, 2015, editorial, the Los Angeles Times mocked Dr. Paul with the headline “If Paul won, would we have to call him Dr. President?”

The rambling editorial also remarked that people such as Dr. Charles Krauthammer, should ditch the Dr. title when functioning as a political pundit, even though he had a doctorate in psychology.

But Dr. Jill is a political figure, too. Her claim to fame is being Joe Biden’s husband, so maybe she should dispense the Dr. title?

No, that is ridiculous even to suggest since Dr. Jill, unlike Paul or Krauthammer, is on the political left, and a woman to boot, so her wishes must be honored, sanctified, and chiseled into granite.

Technically, it should be Dr. Joe Biden, too. He has a law degree, which is a doctorate. But you don’t often hear lawyers insisting on being referred to as doctors.

When the Bidens appear in the U.S. Capital for the State of the Union address, it will be Dr. Joe and Dr. Jill went up a hill. But they won’t be going there to fetch pails of water. The lame-stream media does the job of carrying their metaphorical political water for them.

While attending my son’s commencement for his Master’s Degree, I was astounded to see some of the doctorates that were awarded.

Taking a few minutes to do a general internet search, I find that in general one can pursue, at various universities, doctorates in Dramaturgy (drama and theatre), Parapsychology (paranormal), Safenology (societal safety), Thanatology (working in a hospice) and ambiguous things known as “self-designed” doctorate programs, the post-graduate equivalent of Burger King’s “Have it your way!”

Put in the time. Pay the money. Shazzam, you’re a doctor.

There was one of those self-designed doctorates awarded at my son’s event for something that on the surface seemed patently ridiculous, but I can’t recall the specifics.

I wonder if that woman goes around insisting that people refer to her as Dr.?

It seems such insistence, whether by Dr. Jill or others, serves as a window into an insecure individual’s psyche. Desperate for acclaim and respect, they want to trumpet titles over actual accomplishments.

But theirs is a battle that eventually they are likely to lose.

When Chipman died at the early age of 58 due to cancer, and after he had left coaching for private business, the Associated Press obit, as published in the New York Times called him simply Roy Chipman basketball coach.

No Dr. Roy. No reference at all to that doctorate.

I suspect that when Jill Biden dies, similarly there will be no Dr. title and her most notable deed will be having married a president of the United States, for which there is, as of now, no doctorate degree.